• Reddit.com was built by entrepreneurs in an environment of low regulation (= the internet).

• Reddit.com was built on top of free software done by private individuals. Very little (if any?) of that code comes from any government.

• Reddit Gold is an opt-in feature. You are not required to contribute to "make reddit a better place".

• Sub-reddits are anarchy to its finest. There are almost no regulations on what sub reddit you want to make. No one person has to be "certified" to create sub-reddits. Anybody can make a sub reddit about anything.

• Moderators are the free-market version of police. If people of one sub-reddit do not like the moderators, people leave and form a new organization with new moderators. Some sub-reddits do not have active moderators.

• You are free to post what you want. Your peers denounce you by downvoting, not by penalizing you with fines. Social penalties are far more effective at keeping a conversation on track.

(inb4: "but the Feds invented the internet!" I suggest reading this)

Even after all of the above libertarian/anarcho-capitalist features of reddit, reddit remains a place of high intellectual activity and a place to discuss even the most obscure topics. You get conversations from people confessing terrible crimes in AMAs to very smart individuals discussing the merits of Marxism to the adventurous side of individuals in travel or polyamory. If you're interested in an obscure topic, there's a reddit for you. If not, create it. Compare that to national print media or hell, the highly regulated TV and Cable industry. If you find a post bothersome, you simply down vote and move on; if you find a subreddit you dislike, you unsubscribe -- you don't kidnap and imprison the author.

tl;dr: And what's with TLDRs? They aren't required by any law, yet people voluntarily use them to make your life easier.

real tl;dr: Reddit is a very large community of voluntarists, whether they know it or not.